In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed’s “independence” by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding.

The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly.

For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in innovation and efficiency, while our dysfunctional Congress has battled endlessly over the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction.

Both houses and both political parties agree that something must be done, but they have been unable to agree on where to find the funds. Republicans aren’t willing to raise taxes on the rich, and Democrats aren’t willing to cut social services for the poor.

In December 2015, however, a compromise was finally reached. On December 4, the last day the Department of Transportation was authorized to cut checks for highway and transit projects, President Obama signed a 1,300-page $305-billion transportation infrastructure bill that renewed existing highway and transit programs. According to America’s civil engineers, the sum was not nearly enough for all the work that needs to be done. But the bill was nevertheless considered a landmark achievement, because Congress has not been able to agree on how to fund a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005.

That was one of its landmark achievements. Less publicized was where Congress would get the money: largely from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street megabanks. The deal was summarized in a December 1st Bloomberg article titled “Highway Bill Compromise Would Take Money from US Banks”:

The highway measure would be financed in part by a one-time use of Federal Reserve surplus funds and by a reduction in the 6 percent dividend that national banks receive from the Fed. . . . Banks with $10 billion or less in assets would be exempt from the cut.

The Fed’s surplus capital comes from the 12 reserve banks. The highway bill would allow for a one-time draw of $19 billion from the surplus, which totaled $29.3 billion as of Nov. 25. . . .

Banks vigorously fought the dividend cut, which was estimated to generate about $17 billion over 10 years for the highway trust fund.

According to Zachary Warmbrodt, writing in Politico in November, the Fed registered “strong concerns about using the resources of the Federal Reserve to finance fiscal spending.” But former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who is now at the Brookings Institute, acknowledged in a blog post that the Fed could operate with little or no capital. His objection was that it is “not good optics or good precedent” to raid an independent central bank. It doesn’t look good.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), ranking member on the House Transportation Committee, retorted, “For the Federal Reserve to be saying this impinges upon their integrity, etc., etc. — you know, it’s absurd. This is a body that creates money out of nothing.”

DeFazio also said, “[I]f the Fed can bail out the banks and give them preferred interest rates, they can do something for the greater economy and for average Americans. So it was their time to help out a little bit.”

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

It may be their time indeed. For over a century, populists and money reformers have petitioned Congress to solve its funding problems by exercising the sovereign power of government to issue money directly, through either the Federal Reserve or the Treasury.

In the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln issued debt-free US Notes or “greenbacks” to finance much of the Civil War, as well as the transcontinental railroad and the land-grant college system. In the 1890s, populists attempted unsuccessfully to revive this form of infrastructure funding. In the Great Depression, Congress authorized the issuance of several billion dollars of US Notes in the Thomas Amendment to the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act. In 1999, Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood introduced the State and Local Government Economic Empowerment Act (H. R. 1452), which would have authorized the US Treasury to issue interest-free loans of US Notes to state and local governments for infrastructure investment.

Law professor Timothy Canova plans to reintroduce this funding model if elected to represent Florida’s 23rd Congressional district, where he is now running against the controversial Debbie Wasserman Schultz, current chair of the Democratic National Convention. Prof. Canova wrote in a December 2012 article:

. . . Wall Street bankers and mainstream economists will argue that greenbacks and other such proposals would be inflationary, depreciate the dollar, tank the bond market, and bring an end to Western civilization. Yet, we’ve seen four years of the Federal Reserve—now on its third quantitative-easing program—experimenting with its own type of greenback program, creating new money out of thin air in the form of credits in Federal Reserve Notes to purchase trillions of dollars of bonds from big banks and hedge funds. While the value of the dollar has not collapsed and the bond market remains strong, neither have those newly created trillions trickled down to Main Street and the struggling middle classes. The most significant effect of the Fed’s programs has been to prop up banks, bond prices, and the stock market, with hardly any benefit to Main Street.

Quantitative easing, as practised by the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve, merely flooded the financial sector with money to the benefit of bondholders. This did not create a so-called wealth affect, with a trickle-down to the real producing economy.

. . . If the EU were bold enough, it could fund infrastructure or renewables projects directly through the electronic creation of money, without having to borrow. Our government has that authority, but lacks the political will. The [Confederation of British Industry] has calculated that every £1 of such expenditure would increase GDP by £2.80 through the money multiplier. The Bank of England’s QE programme of £375bn was a wasted opportunity.

IMF research shows that, in advanced economies, an increase in investment spending worth one percentage point of GDP raises the overall level of output by about 0.4% in the same year and by 1.5% four years after the spending increase.

For the Eurozone, statistical analysis of income and consumption patterns suggests that €100 billion of newly created money distributed to citizens would lead to an increase in GDP of around €232 billion. Using IMF fiscal multipliers, our empirical analysis further suggests that using the money to fund a €100 billion increase in public investment would reduce unemployment by approximately one million, and could be between 2.5 to 12 times more effective at stimulating GDP than current QE.

The Hyperinflation Myth

The invariable objection to exercising the government’s sovereign money-creating power is that it would lead to hyperinflation, but these figures belie that assumption. If adding €100 billion for infrastructure increases GDP by €232 billion, prices should actually go down rather than up, since the supply of goods and services (GDP) would have increased more than twice as fast as demand (money). Conventional theory says that prices go up when too much money is chasing too few goods, and in this case the reverse would be true.

In a November 2015 editorial, the Washington Post admonished Congress for blurring the line between fiscal and monetary policy, warning, “Many a banana republic . . . has come to grief using its central bank to facilitate government deficit spending.” But according to Prof. Michael Hudson, who has studied hyperinflations extensively, that is not why banana republics have gotten into trouble for “printing money.” He observes:

The reality is that nearly all hyperinflations stem from a collapse of foreign exchange as a result of having to pay debt service. That was what caused Germany’s hyperinflation in the 1920s, not domestic German spending. It is what caused the Argentinean and other Latin American hyperinflations in the 1980s, and Chile’s hyperinflation earlier.

Promising Possibilities

Any encroachment on the Fed’s turf is viewed by Wall Street and the mainstream media with alarm. But to people struggling with mounting bills and crumbling infrastructure, the development has promising potential. The portal to the central bank’s stream of riches has been forced open, if just a crack. The trickle could one day become a flow, a mighty river of liquidity powering the engines of productivity of a vibrant economy.

For that to happen, however, we need an enlightened citizenry and congressional leaders willing to take up the charge; and that is what makes Prof. Tim Canova’s run for Congress an exciting development.

64 Responses

OK, we have one small toe in the door to….LIMITED debt-free, “green back money” as Ben, Abe, etal.. tried to help the country stay out of debt with, while using such monies to benefit all…the only way to get new money into circulation that is …fair to all…BUT, watching for inflation of course. My cure for that is also to make sure that not only the federal government is involved in the totals “printed” or generated on a keyboard, but that the STATES use their 10th amendment, etal. means to keep the federals in line to benefit the country, not just big banks anymore…..as the BOND has done since 1919…but you know that already, right ?

Your congress telling the Fed and its owners what to do? What a laugh as even the treasury is run by Wall Street !! This is the Owners realizing that the main street economy had better be revived a la “New Deal” or the whole deal comes undone and then all bets are off. However, as the bankers were unable to curtail their greed this is most likely too little too late

“The most significant effect of the Fed’s programs has been to prop up banks, bond prices, and the stock market, with hardly any benefit to Main Street”.
QE has been a scam since day 1, to prop up the criminals on Wall St, at the expense of the American people.
Its waaay past time for the Congress to actually do what they are elected to do and start governing for America and Americans, rather than growing fat on “donations”.
The sooner that Congress starts telling the Bankers(The Moneymen) what to do(not the other way around) the better it will be for the USA.

The Fed cannot do anything but react to political demands, or to political and judicial corruption. 1 Eliminate the ‘professional politician’ lifetime career. I.e., limit all political life to a maximum term (10 years is enough, same as a president?) 2. Forbid them becoming a lobbyist for 10 years after leaving office. I.e., perhaps eliminate cronyism? 3 Re do the DOJ. The legal establishment appoints the Superior Court. No appointees as chosen friends. Accountable, independent of politics and answerable to ‘we the people’. Answerable to the laws they create, and held accountable to those laws, as American citizens are. I.e. Nobody is ever above any of the laws of this land.
Corruption starts in politics. Not with our Constitution, no matter how hard they are perverting our Country. Just as start, bring your own ideas forward. Let us go forward. Referendums would be an excellent start, eligible to U.S. Citizens and Taxpayers only.

The only people that can change America for the better are the politicians, but most of them have been well and truly bought, including the Presidents, by the “Moneymen”, who are the beneficiaries of the current system………

Agree. However, The Fed can only ‘create’ money in response to excessive “budgetary demands as demanded by those in Congress”. Demand, that, Congress learn to adhere to budgetary disciplines.
Also, Banks cannot demand the Fed protects them from their own excesses. This is not the Fed’s job. It is a corrupt Congress that allows this. Excesses are ordered to be done by those in a corrupt administration. We therefore (vote) must force changes throughout our political systems. I.e. No political appointees. Each and every politician fully accountable (through applicable constitutional laws). No free rides, No guesses. No Pardons. No executive ‘overrides’. or the 5th to hide behind. Lastly do pay them well, making corruptness much worse.
Laws must meet legally intellectual standards that ‘we the people’ can understand. Not the woolly permissions, which our citizens are asked to comply with. So, let’s get going.

But, they only ‘Bailed Out’ the Biggest Wall St Banks, and left 100’s of small ‘regional’ American Banks to go BUST. The FED looked after it’s owners, and threw the American people under the bus,,,,,
Wake up America………You’ve been Screwed, by the ‘Moneymen”…..

Ellen – you must be happy about this, right? Now, the infrastructure improvements will increase land values,which will be a boon to current land owners but increase land and thus housing prices, mortgages and rent to those who do not own land now.

Thus, successful monetary reform simply must be combined with land value capture while removing taxes from houses, buildings, labor and production.

a/k/a Justaluckyfool Please share L. Randall Wray Quote…”“The ‘debt-free money’ cranks hate payment of interest by government. I’m not sure, but I think what they really want to do is to prohibit government payment of interest. That is fine with me. ZIRP forever. Stop paying interest on bank reserves, and stop issuing Treasury bills and bonds. I’m with them. Advocate ZIRP, not banana money.”**Please send info to Bernie, just one way to actually lower taxes while increasing revenue for distribution by Congress.**** https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his-proposals/*****It is correct as stated on ” 60 minutes” (12/11/11)”
President Obama said,”You can’t raise revenues by lowering taxes unless you get the money from somewhere else.” ? DUH, why not lower, yes, lower Federal Personal Income Taxes to ZERO for each individual earning up to $100,000 while at the same time TAXING SOMETHING ELSE!! Google “Justaluckyfool”

Let this be the year;”2016 A voter revolution” “The People Taking Back The Power Of Its Own Money.”
With a hope for success for “Web of Debt (Ellen Brown) with AMI, with PMI in a combined effort to have the people”***** “Believe nothing merely because you have been told it…But whatsoever,
after due examination and analysis,you find to be kind, conducive to the good,
the benefit,the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to,and
take it as your guide.”- Buddha[Gautama Siddharta] (563 – 483 BC),

[…] Source: WEB OF DEBT BLOG In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed’s “independence” by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding. The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructureRead more… […]

I DON T BELIEVE ANY OF THIS . WHATS BURIED IN THE BILL SUCH AS DOWD /FRANK DID WITH THE BAIL IN AND MANY OTHER THEFTS HIDDEN IN THE LAW.UNTIL THERE IS A REAL HOUSE CLEANING OF THESE WALL STREET WAR MONGERS FROM OFFICE IT IS ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS .NO INTEREST WELL WHAT ABOUT HUGE FEES JUST AS THE KNIGHT TEMPLARS DID IN THE 12 TO 14 TH CENTURIES AND UNTIL THERE IS A MILITARY COUP TO THROW OUT THESE CRIMINALS NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE A THIEF WILL ALWAYS BE A THIEF!!!

This question may not be on point, but it does concern Public Banking.

A group of us like the idea of Public Banking, however one of our concerns is politicians’ track record of excessive spending. Would their proclivity to spending bring us back to larger debts in a few years?

The Federal govt has a debt because the Congress made the Treasury borrow money. And the debt is really a savings account for folks with idle cash. The banks “owe” their depositors some 19T$, more that the govt owes their depositors. Banks can fail and money is lost. A govt “CD” or Treasury will always be paid.

The Fed Reserve is the lender of last resort. They have monetized some of debt by acquiring mortgage backed securities and treasuries. I believe the Fed gets a piece of all the action of the $19 trillion. The Fed is just another layer that doesn’t need to be there. But I do understand that idle cash is invested in Treasuries by the public. With a Public Bank, the citizens would get the interest on the debt instead of the Fed having their hand in it.

The “Myth” that government “spend too much of other people’s money” is perpetuated by the “moneymen” who own and control the monetary system. These are the same people who ‘minimize’ there tax(or eliminate it altogether) resulting in “revenue droughts” so that it appears that government are to blame for budget deficits and ultimately the National debt.

“Who controls money controls the World”……Henry Kissinger.

“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of ALL industry and commerce”……President James Garfield 1881.(Assassinated).
When a government is dependent on Bankers for money, they, and not the leaders of the government, control the situation….Napoleon B.

“Money has no Motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency. Their sole object is gain”…..Napoleon B.

1. Bank securities for deficit spending are managed by the Treasury which rolls over the debt perpetually through swaps of new securities for mature securities from the banks. Interest is added in at each swap.
2. The Treasury gets interest money the same way it gets funds for the deficit, through issuing securities and selling them to banks at public auction.
3. The deficit securities will never have their principal paid back to the banks, as the principal will be rolled-over and over and over… Only interest is paid to the banks at each roll-over.
4. A debt never to be paid by agreement of all the parties involved is not a true debt.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The so-called “federal debt” is:
A. Unlike personal debt,
B. Not a burden on the government or on taxpayers
C. Is an interest-paying asset for the economy.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

$6 trillion is owned by foreigners
$6 trillion is owned by the Federal Govt
and most of the balance of $5 trillion is held domestically by pension funds-private and state\local Govt pensions, mutual funds and insurance entities. So its not the case that an undue amount of this interest spending is just going to banks or the 1%. A BROAD CROSS SECTION of the USA receives interest income from Treasury Securities.

Steve – When the Federal Reserve does quantitative easing by buying $40 billion Treasuries monthly, and another similar if not bigger amount in Mortgage Backed Securities, the Treasury pays the FED interest on these investments. The Treasury’s interest payment to the FED is taken from WE THE TAXPAYERS AKA THE PUBLIC. And the Federal Reserve doesn’t report that interest income for taxation purposes.

This is one of the many reasons we need a Public Bank. The interest goes back to the citizens.

charles3000- The Fed is the Lender of Last Resort. In order to avoid panics, they step in and lend money (which imo is just pushing the financial powder keg down the road).

So by lending the Treasury money the FED in exchange receives Treasuries or MBS (fannie and freddie paper COD).

For buying these investments the FED is paid interest income- which is paid for by the taxpayer. (As we all know when the Treasury pays interest, it is out of the pockets of the taxpayer.) Also as i previously noted, the FED doesn’t pay taxes, thereby compounding this black hole in finance.

If governments, and the various government departments, out-spends their budgets, all the so-called money printing by central banks will have no effect. Excesses need to be financed. They are self-serving at a most base level. Hence all encompassing corruptions.
Do not listen to politicians urging you to think along their self-serving lines of thought. There needs to be accountability and I.e. adherence of laws in place for ‘the people, by the people’. Not the un-elected appointees. I.e. Fed, IMF, US Supreme court, EU, or the exercising of Executive Powers, this means they are not answerable to you. Eliminate this and you will eliminate corruption, In Politics, in Banking, Let us learn to (re-) apply the law, no exceptions. no free rides.

Agree with Ellen, and thanks for clear language. It’s also important to note that, whether issued by governments or by bankers, all money is in debt to nature because modern economies extract from nature faster than we replenish. Thus green economies must emerge to bring green lifestyles and infrastructure to prominence.

In the long term, I’m not convinced that this is doable. We have spent the better part of a century building out an automobile-centered infrastructure, with little thought of how it would be kept up, or that oil and gas might not be cheap and plentiful forever. We have too much to maintain, our resources (financial, energy, material) are diminishing, we’re going to have to let a lot of it go:

You quote Bloomberg: “The highway measure would be financed in part by a one-time use of Federal Reserve surplus funds and by a reduction in the 6 percent dividend that national banks receive from the Fed. . . .
The Fed’s surplus capital comes from the 12 reserve banks. The highway bill would allow for a one-time draw of $19 billion from the surplus, which totaled $29.3 billion as of Nov. 25. . . .”

In the 1990s, money was also taken from the surplus fund, which was refilled a couple of years later by the Fed taking the money out of profits usually returned to the Treasury. So there really was no extra taking of anything from the Fed. Do you know if the surplus reduction this time is to be permanent?

Any reduction of the dividend *would* be a breaching of the citadel. Yea!

Here is a plan to save the Federal Reserve as separate from government operations while doing even more for ordinary folks than is advocated here.

Income inequality is generally agreed, across the political spectrum, as a serious problem. A surprisingly easy way to reduce this is available because of the need to constantly increase the money supply. The Federal Reserve was established to maintain a money supply matching the increasing needs of the economy. So if our 17 trillion dollar economy grows by two per cent, the Fed has to supply 340 billion extra dollars to maintain an adequate money supply. This amount is equivalent to about $1000 dollars every year for each man, woman and child in the country.

Currently the Federal Reserve increases the money supply by funneling additional money to banks which contributes to the enrichment of bankers. I suggest that be changed to a grant of that $1000 every year to each person since all of us, in one way or other, comprise the economy, not just the banks. This is what Alaska does with the income from oil extraction in the state; each citizen gets a check every year. Since we all create the need for more cash by our economic activities, shouldn’t we receive the resulting benefit?

Actually, the Federal Reserve has to supply much more because the US dollar is used internationally in the 70 trillion dollar world economy. So it might be two or three times that amount that needs to be added each year. This would benefit not only US citizens but also all other countries since we send so much money overseas by our purchase of imports. It becomes a benefit to the entire world economy!

The economic effects would be massive because so much of that 34 billion dollar amount would be spent immediately. And it would enable the Federal Reserve to moderate the boom and bust cycle by their option to increase or decrease the amount year over year as long as it averages out. Currently, they are able only to affect the interest rate which does not necessarily result in increased spending, as we have seen these past few years. And the actual increase of funds ends up in the banks!

I am surprised this possibility is not being discussed since the only losers would be banks and bankers and they can afford it. So I am offering it here in the hope of stimulating discussion.

The one problem with this proposal is congress would have to authorize it and they would want to spend the money, not let us do it. The Federal Reserve could work around this problem by requiring banks to “lend” the money to anyone with a SS number with no interest and no payback until called-for.

This is not much different in effect to what they are doing by loaning money to the banks that immediately turn around and deposit it at the Fed at a higher interest rate, pocketing the difference. That is what has happened to most of the three trillion dollars of Quantitative Easing.

If the Fed were to take such an initiative, it would establish itself as an essential manager of the economy and separate from the government. It would be limited by its mandate to act in response to the needs for the proper amount of money supply thereby insuring a healthy economy but insulated from political pressures. Who would not want that?

It has been talked about before. Bernanke made a famous reference to the process. He called it “helicopter money.” Bernanke was reacting to the problem we have faced since 2009. The Fed can put money in bank coffers using OMO but no money gets in the economy unless it is borrowed from a bank and money leaves the economy if people pay down loans instead of borrowing more. The shortage of money in the economy is due to just that action by people.

Thanks for the reference. I Don’t think Bernanke went far enough with the proposal. Doing what he did was pushing the envelope already, so going further was a step too far, perhaps.

Nonetheless, having seen the weakness of what he did, thinking further may now be reasonable. My suggestion would make the cash available so broadly and so consistently that it would enter the economy more and more over time. And as long as these “loans” are not called, people will get more comfortable with it all, especially if it were explained as “profit” due to all of us as “owners” of the national economy, thought of as a business.

[…] Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure. […]

[…] Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure. […]

[…] Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure. […]

[…] Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure. […]

[…] Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure. […]

[…] Although most of the money supply would continue to be created and destroyed locally as loans, there would still be a need for the government-issued currency envisioned by the early populists, to fill gaps in demand as needed to keep supply and demand in balance. This could be achieved with a national dividend issued by the federal Treasury to all citizens, or by “quantitative easing for the people” as envisioned by Jeremy Corbyn, or by quantitative easing targeted at infrastructure. […]

948. May 17, Interview on Al Jazeera, in which Ellen Brown gives her critique of President Trump’s approach to infrastructure. Part of coverage of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Infrastructure Week”. Watch it here.

947. May 13, Bring On the Power of a Public Bank for CA: People’s Forum, L.A., 3 pm. Info here. At the beautiful PUENTE Learning Center DTLA in Boyle Heights: https://www.puente.org/locations/

946. May 2, presentation, The Web of Debt and the Deep State: How do we break Free? Info here.